It’s a long study, with seven authors, and I’ve barely made a crack in it, so I won’t try to summarize the specific recommendations. But CNAS, looking at recent cases of international peacekeeping forces in transitional states or autonomous provinces, examines what security conditions need to be met for a viable independent Palestine that doesn’t threaten Israel to come into being.

Israel generally has balked over the years at the prospect of international peacekeeping forces patrolling the West Bank, as such a force would limit Israel’s freedom of military action in occupied Palestine. (Andrew Exum, one of the studies’ authors, lists a short host of reasons why Israel shouldn’t have a problem with such a force while — at least in the introduction — glossing over the fact that it does.) But less important than any specific recommendation is the fact that the think tank that has launched many an official into the Obama Pentagon and State Department, CNAS, is expending any intellectual heft on the issue at all, let along thinking through the modalities of interim internationalization of West Bank/Jordan River Valley security. Such a detailed study, coming in advance of a potential Obama peace plan — which the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu definitely does not want — will most likely be read at the Israeli embassy and in Jerusalem as a sign that a real U.S. push on a two-state solution is gathering momentum.

And it reaffirms a linkage that some on the American Jewish right and the Israeli government don’t want to see made. “Although peace in the Middle East is hardly the exclusive responsibility of the United States,” Exum writes in the introduction, “it is a goal long sought by its political leaders and one inextricably linked to U.S. interests.” That viewpoint was roundly mocked as simplistic at the AIPAC conference this year, despite it being the stated policy of decades of American administrations.

The Obama administration has their priorities exactly backwards; we should be working with our friend and democratic ally to stop Iran’s nuclear program, not throwing in the towel on sanctions while treating Israel like an enemy.

Typical misleading invective on the U.S.-Israel relationship is one thing, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confronted at AIPAC last week. But “throwing in the towel” on Iran sanctions? Hours after Obama gave a schedule for Iran sanctions in a joint statement with Nicholas Sarzoky of France?

My hope is that we are going to get this done this spring. So I’m not interested in waiting months for a sanctions regime to be in place; I’m interested in seeing that regime in place in weeks. And we are working diligently with our international partners, emphasizing to them that, as Nicolas said, this is not simply an issue of trying to isolate Iran; it has enormous implications for the safety and the security of the entire region. We don’t want to see a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

That’s from the transcript of yesterday afternoon’s joint appearance at the White House, emailed to reporters about six hours before Palin’s Facebook post. The New York Times even has a piece headlined “Obama Expects Iran Sanctions Soon.” I suppose Palin can always argue that whatever set of sanctions is ultimately placed on Iran by the U.S. and its allies aren’t “real” sanctions, since that’s the luxury an governor who quits has. But it’s impossible to say Obama threw in the towel on sanctions when the timetable for those sanctions accelerates.

It’s tax time. Palin might want to check how many billable hours her foreign policy aide Randy Scheunemann is charging her for this stuff.

Last evening, the Vice President and General Jones had a working dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Barak at the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory, together with their delegations. They had a productive, candid discussion on the full range of issues in the bilateral relationship, in preparation for the meeting later today between the President and the Prime Minister.

I suppose the timeline is such that after dinner, Netanyahu went to AIPAC and gave his rather defiant speech.

After a slow warm-up, Netanyahu threw some elbows at the Obama administration over the Jerusalem settlements dust-up. “Jerusalem is not a settlement, it’s our capitol,” Netanyahu said, to thunderous applause, causing him to chuckle. “All these neighborhoods are within five minutes of the Knesset. They are an inextricable part of modern Jerusalem. Everyone knows these neighborhoods will be part … of a final peace settlement.”

What about the Palestinians? “We don’t want to rule them. … We want them as neighbors. … Israel is unjustly accused of not wanting peace with the Palestinians. Nothing could be further from the truth. My government has consistently shown its commitment to peace.” He reiterated his call for precondition-less negotiations: “President Abbas, come and negotiate peace.” Yet Mahmoud Abbas and other moderate Palestinians have frequently cited Israel’s settlement construction as a bad-faith action hindering the process.

“Peace requires reciprocity. It cannot be a one-way street in which Israel makes all the concessions and the Palestinians make none,” Netanyahu said. “Israel stands ready to make the compromises for peace, but we expect the Palestinians to compromise as well, to do their part. But there’s one thing I will never compromise on, and that one thing is Israel’s security.” Accordingly, Netanyahu vowed to retain “an Israeli presence on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state,” a condition Palestinian leaders have never accepted.

Netanyahu hopes Israel’s technological advancement can benefit the rest of the world, including by helping it coming up with a substitute for gasoline. “I am confident than in pursuing these goals, we have the support of the United States of America, the greatest nation on earth,” Netanyahu said, commending Obama for his continuing military support to Israel. “I am certain that Israel and America will always stand together.”

If you were hoping for any sort of detail about what exactly Netanyahu offered Clinton as a signal of his commitment to peace, you didn’t get that from this speech.

In a capsule summary ahead of the full release of the poll on Thursday, AAI’s James Zogby finds:

42% of Democrats had a favorable rating of Israel compared to 92% of Republicans resulting in a 50% gap between the parties.

While the gap is higher in this poll, the finding is consistent with a recent Gallup poll that had 53% of Democrats with a favorable view compared to 80 % of Republicans.

That partisan gap does not translate into sympathy with the Palestinians, according to AAI. But Zogby’s summary says that a “plurality or slight majority” agree that an “inability to prevent Israel’s settlement expansion makes the U.S. less respected in the world.” In other words, it’s a poll soon to be denounced by Abraham Foxman.

While Livni said she was “so frustrated and angry for the fact that Israel is being seen through the distorted lenses of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she echoed a call made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this morning about the need “to reach and agreement that ends the conflict and keeps the Israeli interest.” Livni articulated the “Zionist vision of a secure, Jewish democratic state in the Land of Israel and the promise that is part of the declaration of independence.” She called that struggle second only to the “fight for the existence of the state of Israel.”

We’ll see if Netanyahu echoes those priorities. Livni said a lot that Israelis across the political spectrum can embrace issues such as the need to preserve Israel’s international standing and to stop Iran’s nuclear program. But Livni drew some subtle distinctions as well. She got applause for saying the world shouldn’t view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the crucial problem of the Middle East, because ”Iran is the problem as well.” Expect Netanyahu to chop off that “as well” when he speaks tonight.

(On Iran, Livni drew furious laughter by saying the world ought to tell the Iranian government, “Stay in your room until you learn to behave.”)

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses AIPAC on Monday. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Setting nearly two weeks’ worth of diplomatic acrimony behind her, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a passionate address to the U.S.’s largest pro-Israel lobbying organization, declaring the the U.S.’ bond to Israel to be “rock solid,” and gently challenging the Israeli government to commit wholeheartedly to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

[Security1] In a rhetorical flourish to play down the tension over Israel’s announcement of Jerusalem settlement expansions during a visit by Vice President Biden, Clinton said the settlement move “exposes daylight between Israel and the United States that others in the region could hope to exploit.” That line implicitly rebuked Israel’s more conservative American defenders over the fracas, who have said that Obama’s reaction — that the Israelis “insulted” the U.S. — was the problem, not the settlement expansion itself. Clinton, speaking to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference at the Washington Convention Center, effectively shifted the burden of the division onto Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will address the conference early on Monday evening.

That set the tone for the message Clinton sought to deliver on the need to reinvigorate Mideast peace talks, starting with the new indirect talks the U.S. is brokering: she said the peace process exists within the context of a strong U.S.-Israel bond, and never suggested that the U.S. views Israeli cooperation on a two-state solution as a diplomatic dealbreaker. By contrast, Clinton made a case that intransigence on a two-state solution was against the Israeli interest. “The inexorable mathematics of demography are hastening the hour at which Israelis may have to choose between preserving their democracy and staying true to the dream of a Jewish homeland,” Clinton said, a statement for which she received no applause from the assembled pro-Israel activists.

The secretary received a more fervent reception by forcefully denouncing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the fulfillment of which AIPAC executive director Howard Kohl called an “overarching imperative” that “no other issue can be allowed to detract, distract or derail.” She called on Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, to “renounce violence, recognize Israel, and abide by previous signed agreements” and gave no indication that it would be invited to peace talks. And she tied President Obama — about whom AIPAC maintains a somewhat skeptical view, despite 78 percent of American Jews voting for him in 2008 — to Jewish history, saying he and his family “have lived the Diaspora experience.”
With a deftness to what her audience wished to hear, Clinton said that “reaching a two-state solution will not end all these threats” to Israel’s security, an article of faith among the pro-Israel community, but immediately added that “failure to do so gives our extremist foes a pretext to spread violence, instability, and hatred.”

At the same, Clinton did not use the speech to outline additional commitments the U.S. expects Israel to fulfill, saying instead that both Israel and the Palestinians ought not to issue “unilateral statements and actions that undermine the process.” Nor did Clinton unveil any U.S. peace plan, as some advocates of a two-state solution had hoped she would, let alone chastise Israel for additional settlement activity that the Israeli peace organization Peace Now has identified as being in the planning stages. The closest she came was to urge Netanyahu to “continue” building “trust and momentum toward comprehensive peace by demonstrating respect for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, stopping settlement activity, and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” all of which fall short of new concrete responsibilities for Israel.

Hadar Susskind, the policy and strategy director for J Street, AIPAC’s younger and more progressive counterpart organization, said Clinton “obviously knows and understands intimately the room she’s in,” but praised the substance of the secretary’s message. “She did a good job of saying we’re all coming at this from the same goals,” Susskind said. “She said, look, we don’t think this [Jerusalem settlement expansion] is in the best interest of Israel, and we’re going to continue to do what we can to bring the parties to the table for direct talks.”

Clinton did not disclose any details of any diplomatic assurances Netanyahu conveyed to her before the weekend, a move that cleared Mideast envoy George Mitchell to return to the region over the weekend and for Netanyahu to receive a White House reception Tuesday. Before Netanyahu addresses AIPAC, his chief political rival, Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni, will deliver a speech to AIPAC delegates at 2 p.m.

Recall that all Petraeus said was that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict set the “strategic context” for the U.S. and its allies in the Mideast and allowed extremists to exploit the decades-old tension in ways deleterious to U.S. and allied interests. But to Foxman, that’s “proven to have no validity.”

After recapping a selective presentation of Petraeus’s remarks, Foxman writes at the Jerusalem Post:

What inevitably happens if such unrealistic weight in the region is given to the Israeli-Arab conflict is that Israel comes to be seen as the problem. If only Israel would stop settlements, if only Israel would talk with Hamas, if only Israel would make concessions on refugees, if only it would share Jerusalem, everything in the region would be fine. Iraq would be fine. Afghanistan would be fine. Pakistan would be fine. Iran would be fine.  Lebanon would be fine.

You can search long and hard, but Petraeus never for a second implied he believed such a thing. If Foxman’s strawmanning is hardly news to observers of his career, it’s exceptional that he would continue to attack the most respected U.S. military figure in the country — who has indicated he has no desire to reply to Foxman, by the way. What’s more, I’m at the AIPAC conference today, and it’s notable how none of Foxman’s erstwhile allies have demonstrated any willingness to fall down the rabbit hole of attacking Petraeus.

“The speech was very good overall,” said Hadar Susskind, J Street’s policy and strategy director. “She’s good on content, and she obviously knows and understands intimately the room she’s in.” Susskind gave Clinton high marks for the speech’s forceful challenge to Iranian nuclear ambitions and Palestinian incitement ahead of “the issue at hand, and the real substantive disagreement the U.S. administration and the Israeli administration have. She did a nice job of saying we’re all coming at this with the same goals.”

On Clinton’s brief reminder that the perpetuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict damages U.S. interests in the Middle East — a notion that Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League called “dangerous and counterproductive” last week in rebuking, of all people, Gen. David Petraeus — Susskind said, “It’s unquestionably a true fact that this issue has an impact on U.S. issues with the rest of the world. You can argue that shouldn’t be the case, but you can’t really argue that it doesn’t, and I think she was merely stating the fact.”

Susskind and J Street spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick were generally pleased with the reaction Clinton got from AIPAC’s delegates, although expectations were pretty low. “I was happy she didn’t get booed,” Susskind said. “Our interest is in having a safe, secure, Jewish democratic Israel, and that’s what the U.S. is working toward.”

I asked them how they’ve been received, as AIPAC has tended to look upon J Street as something between an annoying lefty younger cousin and the insufferable kid who threatens the harmony of the family seder. Spitalnick said she walked into the conference yesterday and overheard an older couple “saying, you know, ‘How can an entire group of Jews be against AIPAC, be against Israel?’ And the wife goes, ‘Oh, you mean J Street?’ and the husband goes, ‘Of course.’

“So I go, ‘Hey, I’m J Street, and I’m here, and I am enjoying this conference and I don’t think I’m against Israel because I love Israel, and I don’t think I’m against AIPAC either, and by no means are we here to oppose AIPAC.’ And we had a nice conversation. We were waiting to get into the evening plenary, and by the end she took my card and said she was going to read our literature, learn more and hope she’s able to understand a little bit more.”

She walked off stage to a standing ovation and hugs and kisses from AIPAC’s leadership. Late this afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the crowd. The ball is in his court now.